THE MAGAZINE OF SAINT NINIAN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH (Corner of Albert Drive and Pollokshaws Road Glasgow)

www.stniniansglasgow.org.uk www.facebook.com/StNiniansPollokshields

June 2019

Service Times

Sunday Services

8am Morning Prayer (1st Sunday in the month only) 8.30am Eucharist (said) 10.15am Sung Eucharist

Weekday Services

Thursday 9.30am Morning Prayer 10am Eucharist (1970) First Saturday of each month: 10:00 am Healing Service

Saints’ Days Eucharist as announced

Clergy and Ministers

Bishop: Vacant, Bishop’s Office, 5 St Vincent Place, G1 2DH Tel 0141 221 6911/6912 Fax 0141 221 6490 E-mail: [email protected]

Rector: The Revd Paul Romano, 32 Glencairn Drive, G41 4PW Tel : 0141 423 1247 E-mail: [email protected]

Deacon: Mr Paul Whitton,

Eucharistic Assistants: Mrs Liz Booth, Mr Vivian Davey .

If you would like your copy of the magazine sent to you by email, please email [email protected]

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Rector writes

The news that you as a congregation raised the sum of £882 for St Luke’s Hospital in Malawi is, yet again, testament to the amazing generosity of the St Ninian’s congregation when it comes to raising money for overseas “good causes”. In the midst of my understandable pride as your Rector, I have to confess to a certain sense of unease. I am almost ashamed to admit it because on one view this reaction of mine might be regarded as downright churlish. I feel unease because there seems to be an increasing tendency to be oblivious to the poverty that exits in this country. We seem to be very reluctant to speak of such things and I wonder why. Could it be that, as the fifth richest country in the world, to speak of relative poverty is to be regarded as a dangerous “talking-down” of the nation? I am very aware of a deep undercurrent prevalent in our society, since at least the 1980s, that regards all those on benefits as being little more than scroungers. Now I am willing to accept that there will always be those who will seek to take advantage of the largesse of the state but it cannot on any view account for the facts that have emerged recently. My unease becomes more concrete and grows into a palpable sense of shock and then anger when I read the results of a United Nations Report into Poverty in the UK. Strange to say this has received but little publicity. Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has published his final report on the state of Britain. The report accuses the government of the “systematic immersion of a significant part of the British population into a state of poverty”. The Report declares that 14 million people are now living in relative poverty. Recent Government policies have been compared to the creation of “Victorian workhouses”. To receive Universal Credit claimants must show they have spent 35 hours searching for work and policies are designed to make everything as difficult as possible for the claimant. The UN Report claims that nearly 40% of children are expected to be living in poverty by 2021. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has estimated the figures to be nearer to 30%. Even if the upper number is exaggerated, these figures are still utterly unacceptable in the fifth richest country in the world. The UN Report is supported by research carried out by the Care Quality Commission and UNICEF who also report on the rising number of working families dependent on food banks; the unprecedented rise in child mental health problems; teachers being driven to provide food for pupils; the closure of youth services and the hostile environment towards immigrants. The UN Report should horrify us but I think there is a very real problem about feeling able to discuss these issues as a church family. The issue lies, I think, in the fact that this is the sphere of domestic politics. It’s much easier for us

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to talk about issues overseas and to encourage generosity in response to some emergency or worthy cause. Talking about the overseas problem very rarely raises issues of domestic party politics and so congregations feel able to talk freely. However, if the challenge is, say, poverty in Glasgow or Scotland any discussion inevitably leads to scrutinising the policies of the government of the day. The Church seems to have managed to contrive, over the centuries, a situation whereby it is regarded as not the done thing to talk about party politics. Now I quite appreciate and understand that a Rector is in a very difficult position. If a Rector makes his or her allegiance to a particular political party obvious from the pulpit, so to speak, then the Rector can expect trouble because such a declaration would make one half of the congregation happy and the other half very unhappy!

A Rector is supposed to be a figure of unity not a symbol of division. If I feel a necessary constraint, no such constraint should affect you: the members of the congregation. Let us once and for all put to rest the nonsense that religion should not soil its delicate hands by plunging into the maelstrom that is politics. The way we organise our society is just as important to religion as the way we tend our soul. I have said on a number of occasions that the whole Brexit affair has diverted the country from many equally vital issues. How much more vital, then, is the issue of whether a child in the United Kingdom will or will not have a decent chance in life freed from the burden of grinding poverty? The Rector

Cover photo: view of the interior of the Cathedral of the Living Christ, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Photo: Sandra Whitton. Please send any photos suitable for the front cover with a short description. Credit will be given for all photos used. IS.

Getting to know you will return next time. If you are interested in taking part, please let me know! IS

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DIARY FOR JUNE 2019 *** indicates use of incense

1 Sat 10am Healing Service 2 Sun Easter 7 8am Morning Prayer 8.30am Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 10.15am Sung Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 6 Thu 10am Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 8 Sat 10am Coffee morning 9 Sun Pentecost 8.30am Eucharist 10.15am Sung Eucharist 1982 Liturgy*** 6.30pm Taizé service for Pentecost 11 Tue 12.30pm Men who lunch 13 Thu 10am Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 16 Sun Trinity Sunday 8.30am Eucharist 10.15am Sung Eucharist 1982 Liturgy*** 1pm Vestry meeting 20 Thu 10am Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 23 Sun Pentecost 2 8.30am Eucharist 10.15am Sung Eucharist 1982 Liturgy 27 Thu 10am Eucharist 1970 Liturgy 30 Sun Pentecost 3 8.30am Eucharist 10.15am Sung Eucharist 1982 Liturgy

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June Mindings 1 John Corney 15 Tom Weston 5 Arthur Fleming Colin Bullough 6 Chris Forrest 17 Vera Ferris Anne Reid 18 Albert Burke 7 Beryl Gilchrist 19 Robert Pate 10 Margaret McGifford 20 Jonathan Mall Eva Browning Skye Sarah Graham Edie Campbell 21 Margaretta Montgomery 12 Willie Boyd 22 Norma McAvoy 13 George Gibson 24 Constance Maud Caldwell Isa Cauley 30 John Harper 14 John Fraser John Girling

Christian Solidarity Worldwide

CSW June Prayer points. Cuba has seen over 150 violations of religious freedom in 2018, and the new constitution undermines what rights were there. In the Central African Republic, where there has been strife since 2012, there are lots of violations of religious freedom rights and civilians are targeted for religious or ethnic reasons; IDP (internally displaced persons) camps are targeted too where people are very vulnerable. Burma has hundreds of thousands being detained for their faiths or ethnicities, though some small numbers have been released and pardoned recently. The Rohingya peoples and those from the Shan and Kachin provinces continue to be at risk. With potential changes in trade agreements if Brexit comes into being, then the UK’s role in being able to use trade agreements to encourage human rights might be damaged. Please pray for all these situations and their resolution. The CSW website can give more details. Margaret E. Anderson.

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June coffee morning to good use. We now have a Saturday 8th June marvellous selection of glasses 10:00—12:00 ranging from champagne flutes, wine glasses, high ball and pint tumblers. JS Bishop’s Lent Appeal for St

Luke’s Hospital, Malosa Let Glasgow Flourish awards The Lent boxes have produced the This year we have advanced to excellent sum of £731.94 and further Highly Commended at the donations of £150 have brought the Incorporation of Gardeners of total to £881.94. Thank you to Glasgow awards. We were everyone who has given so absolutely delighted to receive this generously to the appeal to build a award. second operating theatre at the Our thanks to Liz and Ron Booth for hospital. helping to set up the new barrels and Vivian Davey plants, and to Paul Whitton for his litter-picking duties. JS Prayers for healing Please pray for Karen, Elaine Kelly, Moira Starter Packs Watson, Bernadette I am gathering crockery, kitchenware Chapman and David and other small household items to Williams. Very many take to Starter Packs. If you are thanks, your prayers are always very having a spring clear out, could you much appreciated. bring items to the church in a box or Alva Caldwell bag and I will take them to the office in Govan. Thank you. Christian Aid week Lesley Lucas The grand total raised in Christian Aid week was £1134.53 including gift Lent hymn competition aid. Thank you to everyone who Please submit your entries to the donated and thank you to everyone Lent hymn competition to David S who helped out. by 1 December 2019 - thank you. Rosemary Anwar DS

Thank you Our appreciation goes to Tesco (through Lorna) for the selection of glasses. They have already been put

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All the right notes

Then and Now

Picture this! Sicily, 19… oh no, that was the Golden Girls! How about Glasgow, 197?? (not that silly) when a slim young chap with a mop of auburn hair first set foot into St. Mary’s Cathedral on Great Western Road. Welcomed by the Provost, no less (who happened to be at the door), handed a hymn book and a prayer book and invited to take a seat.

Growing up in a small Church of Scotland, this was new to me, for everyone had their own ‘pews’ and there I was, standing in a building five times the size of my ‘local’ and could sit anywhere! What a good start!

I visited St. Mary’s as a result of hearing Choral Evensong on the radio – a wee tranny with a speaker about 2 inches in diameter, so the sound quality was second to none. Imagine my toes curling when I heard the organ and choir, live, sitting in a seat of my choice.

Being the inquisitive type, as soon as the voluntary ended, I had to ask if I could see the organ and I met Timothy Redman, then organist of St Mary’s, who let me play for a short time and suggested that I meet some of the choir in the Synod hall. Before I knew it, I was singing the alto part of Howells Like as the Hart and invited to come – AND SING – at Evensong the following Wednesday. So that’s how it all started. I travelled every Sunday and Wednesday: I had been given the chance to sing some glorious music.

In those days, the cathedral choir would look at something on the Sunday and sing it on the Wednesday (a bit like we do here...) and so the learning curve was huge and suddenly, it was Lent. Again, new to me, there were services throughout Holy Week and if I’d known, I might have prepared myself for a week of the most wonderful music I’d ever heard, let alone sung.

Maundy Thursday left me feeling quite numb and after singing the Three Hours on Good Friday, I remember walking along Great Western Road in tears. Una- shamedly, a young man in tears on a Glasgow street! I was so moved by all the drama and music; it didn’t occur to me that people might see me.

Many years later, I’m still moved almost to tears at this time, especially on Maundy Thursday, singing Psalm 22 to plainsong, while the altar is stripped. I

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still experience the same tummy butterflies singing on Good Friday. Our choir works very hard to make these services special and I hope that they too, enjoy that wee tummy flutter.

But I can’t help thinking that this experience is missed by many, for these services are not well attended and I feel it’s a great shame, as they prepare the soul for the joy of Easter.

I often make a joke that acoustics are much better when singing in an empty building, but to share this experience with others at this special time would far outweigh a nice echo. David S

Save the Children’s centenary

St. Ninian’s has been supporting Save the Children for many decades, especially through the work of Sandra and Paul Whitton. Save the Children’s work is on two main fronts - dealing with long term projects throughout the world, and responding to the needs in times of disasters, natural or man-made. The main aim behind all of these is to help children - helping them directly, supporting their families, or supporting communities so that they are helped. This year sees the centenary of the founding of SCF, as it previously was, by Eglantine Jebb and her sister, Dorothy Buxton. They found that children in Austro-Hungary and Germany were suffering as a result of the British blockade round Germany and her allies in the First World War. They tried to advertise this but were arrested and found guilty of helping enemies during war- time. The fighting had stopped but the peace treaties had not yet been signed. At a meeting in the Albert Hall, the large numbers who had come to jeer them found themselves convinced of the rightness of the cause and founded Save the Children at the meeting. Eglantine and Dorothy also argued that children were not responsible for the actions of their parents. Soon Eglantine had produced the first Rights of the Child, later taken up by the League of Nations and then the United Nations. Interestingly enough, the original Rights included one whereby children had the right to help others. Almost immediately the patterns of SCF’s work were established and maybe I'll write about them in a later issue of the magazine.

Twenty-five years ago we marked 75 years of Save the Children. On that occasion Princess Anne was interviewed on Blue Peter. (She is our President, a hard-working one, while her mother is our Patron.) At the end of the interview,

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the interviewer wished her and SCF the best for the next 75 years. Her immediate response, quite rightly, was horror, as she explained that the aim of the organisation was to work itself out of existence by seeing that all children were cared for as they should be. Sadly a quarter of a century on we are still very much needed. Margaret E. Anderson (long-term supporter, former member of Glasgow, Scottish and other SCF committees.)

The bird, the tree, the fish and the bell. Part 2: Bishop and burgh

In the previous article, we located the emblems of Glasgow in their source, the twelfth-century Life of Kentigern. But how did they go from there to their current place in the stonework and the stained glass of St Ninian’s, and in thousands more places across the city? This article traces the second part of their journey. The best part of the evidence, for a few centuries, comes from official seals.

Although Bishop Jocelyn had commissioned the Life, neither he nor his immediate successors seem to have used the familiar emblems. Their seals – which differed from bishop to bishop rather than belonging to the diocese – tended to represent only St Kentigern himself. The seal of Bishop The salmon is the first emblem to appear, first on the Robert Wishart, with bird and branch (left); seal of Bishop William Wischard (1270-71) and then of fish (right). his successor, the great Bishop Robert Wishart (1271-1316); Wishart also introduced the tree and the bird. The bell made its first ecclesiastical appearance on the privy seal of the Chapter of Glasgow, along with the fish; it had appeared on the seal of the community in 1293.

Subsequent bishops used various combinations of the emblems, the fish being the most common; it can be seen, for example, on Bishop Blacader’s arms on the rood screen The mediaeval seal of the Cathedral. The first seal to combine all four emblems of the city of was that of the Chapter of Glasgow “for causes”, i.e. the Glasgow, with all Bishop’s court, used 1488-1540. four emblems.

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All these seals except that of the court were essentially the personal insignia of the bishops. To understand how they became attached to the city it is necessary to understand Glasgow’s status during the Middle Ages. Unlike its neighbour Rutherglen, Glasgow was not a Royal Burgh but a “bishop’s burgh”. Its civic institutions were subject to the bishop’s authority, so their insignia echoed those of the bishops. The definitive version by the late mediaeval period is shown at the bottom of the previous page; note the unusual spelling of the city’s name! The Reformation saw another change, with the familiar design appearing for the first time: this seal continued in use until 1789.

Through the period of the Reformation, the bishops’ grip on Glasgow lessened. Glasgow was granted the status of a Royal The coat of arms on the Tron Burgh in 1636, though it remained under the Church. archbishop’s authority until 1690. It may not be coincidence that in this period the emblems flourished on civic buildings. What is probably the oldest surviving example was carved above the door of the city church, later the Tron Church, in 1592, and can still be seen beneath a layer of paint above the entrance to the Tron Theatre. Meanwhile, the familiar motto “Let Glasgow Flourish” seems to have appeared first on the bell of the Tron steeple, in 1631.

It was just before episcopacy in the Church of Scotland was abolished in 1689 that the Glasgow coat of arms finally attained its modern form, on the seals of Bishop Alexander Cairncross (1684-87) and his successor Bishop John Paterson (1687-1708). The end of episcopacy left the Diocese of Glasgow in limbo, somewhere between a memory and a heresy, and it left the emblems of Kentigern floating far from their original purpose. In the final part of this series we will look at their return. David Pritchard Images: public domain The seal of Bishop John Paterson, with his personal arms on the right.

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DUTY ROTAS

Date 9 June 16 June 23 June Pentecost Trinity Sunday Pentecost 2

Sides-people E Graham G Vahey L Arrol C Graham E Laurie J Arrol

Readers L Lucas C Shearer J Maxwell

Readings Genesis 11.1-9 Pr 8.1-4,22-31 Isaiah 65.1-9 Acts 2.1-21 Romans 5.1-5 Gal 3.23-29 John 14.8-17 John 16.12-15 Luke 8.26-39

Servers (r) S Whitton I Nairn J Whannel (l) P Whitton R Anwar I Nairn (th) I Nairn tba

Intercessions I Nairn S Walker E Rodgers

Elements N Gordon T Baylis L Booth A Forrest L Arrol R Anwar

Coffee A Forrest J McLean D Sinclair T Baylis C Shearer J Sinclair V Rodgers J Maxwell A Forrest

Welcomer E Graham C Graham

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DUTY ROTAS

Date 30 June 7 July Pentecost 3 Pentecost 4

Sides-people J Sinclair J McLean D Sinclair M Montgomery

Readers G Vahey T Baylis

Readings 1 Kings 19.15-16, Isaiah 66.10-14 19-21 Gal. 6.1-16 Gal 5.1, 13-25 Luke 10.1-11, 16- Luke 9.51-62 20 Servers (r) S Whitton R Anwar (l) P Whitton I Nairn (th)

Intercessions Y Grieve Rector

Elements E Graham A Forrest N Gordon T Baylis

Coffee A Marr A Forrest Y Grieve T Baylis A Grieve V Rodgers

Welcomer

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Lay Officers

Lay Representative Thomas Baylis Alternate Lay Rep Vacant Regional Council Rep Joyce Maxwell Rector’s Warden Liz Booth People’s Warden Vacant Vestry Secretary Irene Nairn Vestry Treasurer Vivian Davey PVG Officer Rosemary Anwar Property Convener Peter Falconer

The Vestry

The Rector, Liz Booth, Irene Nairn, Vivian Davey, Angela Forrest, Thomas Baylis, Joyce Maxwell, Eileen Graham, Catherine Cumming, David Spottiswoode, Nancy Bain.

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The Church

At St. Ninian’s, as in nearly all Episcopal Churches in Scotland, we reserve the sacrament of the Eucharist. From this reserved sacrament Holy Communion is given to the aged, sick or infirm at home, in hospital or in hospice to assure them of Christ’s love and presence and to enfold them in the communion and fellowship of the church. The sacrament is also reserved to assure us all of Christ’s constant presence with his people.

For baptism, visitation of the sick, funerals, marriages and confession, please speak to the Rector.

At St. Ninian’s, we meet our needs largely through planned giving envelopes. Every member of the church is urged to pledge a definite amount and, if possible, to Gift Aid their offering. Please apply for information and envelopes through either the Recorder or the Treasurer.

The Vestry has reluctantly decided that it is unwise to keep the church open on weekdays. If you need access at times other than the services and events posted on the notice board please phone the Vestry Secretary.

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Life at St. Ninian’s

General enquiries to [email protected]

Organisation Contact

Bible Reading Rosemary Anwar Fellowship Choir David Spottiswoode [email protected] Christian Aid Rosemary Anwar Coffee Convenor Yvonne Grieve Flower Guild Sandra Whitton Hall Convenor Joyce Maxwell [email protected] Library David Pritchard, Isabel Stainsby Magazine The Rector (Editor) [email protected] Joyce Sinclair (Sec & Treasurer) Isabel Stainsby (Copy Editor) Mothers’ Union Lesley Lucas (Branch Leader) Aileen Grieve (Secretary) Paperback Book Rosemary Anwar Club Pew Sheet Valerie Rodgers Pollokshields Vivian Davey Churches Together Prayer List Alva Caldwell Recorder Sandra Whitton Sacristy Guild Christine Shearer Sanctuary Guild Sandra Whitton Servers’ Guild Paul Whitton Traidcraft Catherine Cumming Web Page Susan Walker [email protected]

St Ninian’s Episcopal Church, Glasgow, is a charity registered under no. SC010966

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